Video: VA farmer facing fines for … hosting a birthday party

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 3:21 pm on August 22, 2012

What does every 10-year-old girl want for her birthday? A big party and lots of room to have fun. My own 10-year-old granddaughter had her campout/sleepover birthday party at our house three months ago. Fortunately, we’re not farmers in Fauquier County, Virginia — where we would have had to apply for a “special events” permit to host the party for the Little Admiral or her friends. Martha Boneta isn’t so fortunate, because when she invited her friend to stage a birthday party for her 10-year-old daughter at the farm, a few extra clowns showed up and issued her a citation for it — which could cost thousands of dollars in fines:

And people wonder why the Tea Party sprang into existence. Tea Party activists showed up to protest Fauquier County’s actions two weeks ago when Boneta tried to appeal the citation for the party and for selling her produce at the farm to consumers — which Virginia state law allows. The Gadsden flags and the pitchforks all came out, but to no avail; Boneta’s citations were upheld, leaving her to go to court:

Hashour said Boneta has roughly 30 to 45 days to make an appeal at Fauquier County Circuit Court.

Boneta’s attorney, Michelle Rosati, declined to comment Thursday as to what the next legal step will be. Boneta stayed out of the hearing.

“We feel very strongly that the law is on our side,” Rosati told Virginia Watchdog.

If not, then the words of Charles Dickens comes to mind, when a court told Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist that the law supposes that a husband has control of his wife

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

Hopefully, the only asses in Virginia are the Fauquier County officials who cited Boneta, and — inevitably — the unnamed neighbor who sicced them on Boneta in the first place for having a birthday party for a 10-year-old girl and her friends. Thankfully, I have much better neighbors than Boneta.